CreateSymbolicLinkTransactedA function (winbase.h)

Article
02/09/2023

[Microsoft strongly recommends developers utilize alternative means to achieve your application’s needs. Many scenarios that TxF was developed for can be achieved through simpler and more readily available techniques. Furthermore, TxF may not be available in future versions of Microsoft Windows. For more information, and alternatives to TxF, please see Alternatives to using Transactional NTFS.]

Creates a symbolic link as a transacted operation.

Syntax

BOOLEAN CreateSymbolicLinkTransactedA(
  [in] LPCSTR lpSymlinkFileName,
  [in] LPCSTR lpTargetFileName,
  [in] DWORD  dwFlags,
  [in] HANDLE hTransaction
);

Parameters

[in] lpSymlinkFileName

The symbolic link to be created.

[in] lpTargetFileName

The name of the target for the symbolic link to be created.

If lpTargetFileName has a device name associated with it, the link is treated as an absolute link; otherwise, the link is treated as a relative link.

[in] dwFlags

Indicates whether the link target, lpTargetFileName, is a directory.

Value	Meaning
0x0	The link target is a file.
SYMBOLIC_LINK_FLAG_DIRECTORY 0x1	The link target is a directory.

[in] hTransaction

A handle to the transaction. This handle is returned by the CreateTransaction function.

Return value

If the function succeeds, the return value is nonzero.

If the function fails, the return value is zero. To get extended error information, call GetLastError.

Remarks

Symbolic links can either be absolute or relative links. Absolute links are links that specify each portion of the path name; relative links are determined relative to where relative–link specifiers are in a specified path. Relative links are specified using the following conventions:

Dot (. and ..) conventions—for example, "..\" resolves the path relative to the parent directory.
Names with no slashes (\\)—for example, "tmp" resolves the path relative to the current directory.
Root relative—for example, "\Windows\System32" resolves to "current drive:\Windows\System32".
Current working directory–relative—for example, if the current working directory is C:\Windows\System32, "C:File.txt" resolves to "C:\Windows\System32\File.txt".
Note If you specify a current working directory–relative link, it is created as an absolute link, due to the way the current working directory is processed based on the user and the thread.

In Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, this function is supported by the following technologies.

Technology	Supported
Server Message Block (SMB) 3.0 protocol	No
SMB 3.0 Transparent Failover (TFO)	No
SMB 3.0 with Scale-out File Shares (SO)	No
Cluster Shared Volume File System (CsvFS)	No
Resilient File System (ReFS)	No

SMB 3.0 does not support TxF.

Note

The winbase.h header defines CreateSymbolicLinkTransacted as an alias which automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows Vista [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows Server 2008 [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	winbase.h (include Windows.h)
Library	Kernel32.lib
DLL	Kernel32.dll